Someone was seriously injured in a shooting in Assen on Wednesday evening just before six o’clock. Five suspects have been arrested. Jari de Jonge (17) saw the suspected perpetrators, a group of young boys, running away. The fear is there.
From behind the red/white tape, Jari watches as officers work to secure tracks. There has just been a shooting here, between the flats on Maria in Campislaan and the Vincent van Gogh College. One person was seriously injured. The ambulance just left.
“Five gunshot wounds in the back,” says Jari. “That’s what I heard.”
A few minutes earlier, a young boy wearing sweatpants and a gray hood on his head had already boarded another ambulance. At first glance he did not appear injured.
Fugitive
Jari lives about a five-minute bike ride from the place. He came from a comrade’s house and suddenly saw a group of young boys running away. “Five or six.”
The secondary school student picked up his phone, looked up the alarms on the internet and discovered that there had been a shooting. And that the perpetrators were on the run.
“Then you will be shocked. You don’t know what’s behind it. What’s going on and what it’s all about. If it is a targeted settlement, then yes, then that is of course very sad for the victim. But if it wasn’t, it could have been anyone. Then it could have been me.”
‘Not the most pleasant neighbourhood’
Jari often comes to this neighborhood, Larch. He is a delivery person for Domino’s and Bakker Bart. He often takes the cycle path between the apartment buildings, the Laar, to go through and save time.
“But not for a while, I think. It’s not the nicest neighborhood. A lot of drugs are dealt here. A few days ago there was a report of an apartment fire on De Stroom; there turned out to be a cannabis plantation. And then a shooting like that… It all comes very close. My mother is also a volunteer at the petting zoo here. I don’t like it.”
Ball
A 12-year-old boy joins us. He was the only one, he says, who was able to take a photo of a bullet lying on the ground. “A 9 millimeter, look!” And now he wants to sell that photo to the newspaper. “I was just in time before the police covered the bullet.” He points to an orange/white cone that hides the bullet from view. There is a whole row of cones, a handful.
Then comes the news, about an hour after the shooting, that the police have arrested five suspects. They were taken to the police station for questioning. There are a lot of stories going around, including that the boys attacked each other with machetes before the shooting. The police cannot say anything about it yet, only that they are including those stories in the investigation.
Jari is clearly relieved that five suspects have been apprehended. However, he does have one caveat: “Let’s hope they are the good ones!”
The police could not yet say on Wednesday evening whether the shooter was among those arrested.